| Title | Why digitalisation in the admission procedure of shallow geothermal systems is more than just avoiding paper waste |
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| Authors | Sandra Pester, Holger Jensen |
| Year | 2026 |
| Conference | World Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | |
| Abstract | According to German mining and water law every drilling irrespective of its purpose has to be announce. Lower Saxony, a federal state in Northwest Germany, developed an online drilling-notification many years ago. In 2012, this system was expanded to registering shallow geothermal projects as well in order to accelerate the permitting process, harmonise the procedure of more than 50 water authorities and avoid time losses by sending forms with paper mail. Up to now, detailed plant data from 19,000 of the known 26,600 shallow geothermal plants in Lower Saxony are stored in this database. Analysing this data allows to: 1)Detect long term trends 2)Show regional differences in maps 3)Supply regional institutions with renewable energy data for the geothermal field (e.g. development of long term heat supply plans) 4)Detect new technical developments due to daily actual data 5)Provide decision makers with sound Information about the complete picture of the shallow geothermal development in the state. In May 2025, the first report “Number and facts about shallow geothermal energy in Lower Saxony 2024” is published. This report of an annual series is based on the database mentioned above. One of the main insights showed an increasing number of build shallow geothermal plants from 2007 to 2022, while the registered plants are decreasing in 2023 and 2024. The installed heating capacity shows the same trend but with a much smaller decrease. This demonstrates that less but bigger plants with a higher heating capacity are built. |